Swift and Saddled: A Rebel Blue Ranch Novel

Today was the day. Baby Blue was going to make her debut, and I was trying—and failing—to be cool. I always got a little nervous when I showed a finished project, but this one felt different.

It was different.

This project was important to me. It was my way out of California and a springboard into my career. But it was also much bigger than me.

Baby Blue was a part of a family. It was a dream come true for the man I…liked. A lot. The man who told me he felt something big for me and was willing to wait for me to get there too.

I couldn’t tell him that I was already there.

Because if I was there, that meant that I could stay here, and staying here scared the hell out of me.

I knew if I stayed here that I would never leave. I could almost see it. Wes and I would redo one of the little houses on his part of the property. We would listen to vinyl records on Sunday mornings, and he would draw while I found something to do with my hands. I’d sit with Loretta while he played fetch with Waylon. On the second of June every year, we would go to the Big House and be a part of Ryder Day.

I would never have to wonder what it was like to be loved, because Weston Ryder would love me all the way.

I shook myself out of that train of thought. I could not spiral—not today. I splashed water from the bathroom sink on my face. I grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet to dry it.

When I looked in the mirror, it reminded me of the other night at Baby Blue. First I thought about Wes kneeling in front of me, watching the muscles in his back flex as he devoured me. Look up, sweetheart. Take in the view. Then I thought about how we looked together in the mirror and how he felt inside me. I want your eyes on me.

I watched a blush creep up my cheeks in real time. Jesus Christ, I felt like Wes.

Okay, Ada. Get your game face on. I jumped up and down a few times and shook out my shoulders. It didn’t help.

Everything felt weird today, like I was on the edge of something. It was the same feeling I’d had when I walked into Baby Blue for the first time three months ago.

It was also the same feeling I’d had when I saw Wes for the first time in the bar. I just didn’t recognize it then.

There wasn’t a huge difference in my appearance since I came to Wyoming. My hair was a little longer, and a few freckles had popped up from spending time in the sun.

Even though there wasn’t really anything tangible that had changed about my appearance, I looked lighter—happier.

I’d spent the past three months doing a job that I loved, and right now I was trying to tell myself that that was the only reason. Because I could do the work that I loved anywhere, so if I believed that that was the only reason I looked—and felt—happier, then it would be a lot easier to leave for the job in Tucson.

Fucking hell. Why was I having so many feelings? This annoying internal monologue while looking at myself in the bathroom mirror had to stop.

I left the bathroom before I could have another deep thinking session.

The room I walked into wasn’t the one I’d been spending every night in. Honestly, I didn’t remember the last time I’d slept in here.

The thought of sleeping in a bed without Wes made me sad. He was always so warm, and he never got mad when I put my frozen feet on him.

Nope. Don’t go there. No more deep thinking.

I slid on a pair of jeans and a plain black short-sleeved shirt. One thing was for sure about Wyoming, I’d never experienced so many seasons within such a short period of time—sometimes they hit all four seasons in a day. The decent amount of snow that remained when I got here was long gone, and everywhere I looked it was lush and green.

It made me want to know what it all looked like in the fall.

If everything worked out, I’d be in Arizona, working on a delightful little bed-and-breakfast. My shoulders noticeably drooped, which is the opposite of what they should have been doing. Since when was I not excited about a delightful old bed-and-breakfast?

Since Weston Rhodes Ryder. That’s when.

He’d said a lot of things that had made it abundantly clear how he felt about me, but when I thought about them now, my heart started to kick.

Not in the good way.

Everything he’d said—distance not being important, that he’d wait for me, that I was the moon—was hitting me all at once, and my head started to spin.

The timing could not be more inconvenient.

My brain was starting to take his words and warp them into something they weren’t, into something I’d heard before. From someone else.

Someone who’d made me mistake control for care and dependency for love. All of a sudden, all of these false parallels were knocking around in my head like a pinball machine. The truth was in there too, but everything was going so fast that I didn’t know which was which.

Did I get out of a situation where I was completely and solely dependent on one man just to get into the same situation less than two years later? Did I leave the place that felt like a cage just to get locked in a new one?

I sank to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest.

When I looked up, I saw my car keys on the nightstand. The keys to the car that still didn’t work.

Wes had told me he was going to fix it, but he still hadn’t done it. I knew it was because he’d been busy, and when he asked me if I wanted him to fix it, I told him not to make it a priority. But when I thought about a car that I couldn’t drive, all I thought about was the life I’d had before Rebel Blue, and the life I’d had before the family that came with it.

Wes was good. He was gentle. So why the hell was I freaking out?

Because once I got the urge to run, I couldn’t stop it. Wes could, but he wasn’t here right now. Before I knew what I was doing, I stood up and grabbed my small duffel off the back of the bathroom door.

I was calm as I walked down the hall and opened the garage door. My mask was on, and I knew from experience that it wasn’t going to slip.

Wes’s old truck, the one I didn’t know how to drive, was unlocked, and the keys were on the seat.

I guess it was time to see if those stick shift lessons held up.